


Air Ducts and Crawlspaces

by Pandelion



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 07:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandelion/pseuds/Pandelion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint likes the helicarrier. Not just because looking over the side makes him feel like his namesake, but also because the flying boat is riddled with air ducts and crawlspaces.</p>
<p>And air ducts and crawlspaces were invented with Clint Barton in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Air Ducts and Crawlspaces

Clint likes the helicarrier. Not just because looking over the side makes him feel like his namesake, but also because the flying boat is riddled with air ducts and crawlspaces.

And air ducts and crawlspaces were invented with Clint Barton in mind.

The first few days aboard, he spends his free time exploring, figuring out which ducts go where, the best access points, and which parts were the prime eavesdropping spots. (It turns out there’s a vent directly above the water cooler in the baby agents’ pen and Clint spends a good hour or two there every day, catching up on gossip.)

Once he’s got the layout down, he starts squirreling away things. Spare crossbow bolts, arrows, a few extra magazines of ammo, some guns, a bow or five, spare clothes—pretty much anything short of perishables that might come in handy during the day-to-day life of a SHIELD agent. He’s pretty sure that he could live quite comfortably in the narrow parts of the helicarrier and only come out for food.

Practicing his skills by way of the ducts and crawlspaces doesn’t actually start until he finds one that bypasses all the security for the labs and finds Banner and Stark geeking out over some metal bit or other. It’s Stark and Banner, together, both well within Clint’s underhand toss range, let alone shooting range. How is he supposed to resist that?

Clint actually ends up relocating a bit, to a vent on the other side of the room, because his desired target wasn’t really visible from where he had been at first. Along the way, he picks up one of his smaller crossbows, with the slender bolts that are perfect for firing out of an air vent.

It’s a perfect shot. He aims, draws in a deep breath, then lets it out as he fires and it’s gorgeous. Beautiful trajectory, precise timing. Stark yelps and nearly falls over backwards as the design plans are neatly pinned to the desk and Banner jerks, but then takes a deep breath and visibly cools down.

“What the—Barton, you asshole!” Stark yells, already tracing the trajectory back to the air vent. Clint grins and edges away as he thinks about the quickest way to get to the other side of the helicarrier.

The other side of the helicarrier, it turns out, is the workout rooms and Clint’s four for two today, since he finds both Natasha and Steve in the same room. They’re working out separately, but that’s okay. Clint’s got another nine bolts and this will be easy as pie.

Natasha comes first, since he has to surprise her and that won’t happen if he gets the Captain first. The bolt lands exactly where he wanted it to; center-mass of the dummy Natasha’s currently beating the stuffing out of. She jerks out of the kick she’d been spinning into and whirls around, looking for him, but Clint’s already moved onto Steve. The bolt doesn’t hit the target, but only because Steve punches the bag off the hook—it ends up buried in the wall beyond, but the startled spin-and-duck Steve throws himself into is worth missing the shot.

“What the—”

“Barton, I will—”

Clint doesn’t hear the rest of Natasha’s threat since he’s halfway to the break room with the vague idea of finding Thor and making it five for three.

Thor’s not in the break room or the cafeteria and after a moment’s thought, Clint heads back towards the labs. Sure enough, he finds the Asgardian lounging in Doctor Foster’s lab, fiddling with some gadget or other as she hunches over a console.

It takes Clint a moment to come up with an appropriate target, but then he sees the apple on the counter next to Thor and he grins. Classics are classics for a reason, after all.

And Thor’s bellow of, “Fiend! Reveal yourself and fight me like a warrior!” is just way too entertaining.

“Not likely, pal. I like my limbs where they are, thanks,” Clint mutters as he moves away. He ends up lounging above the junior agents’ water cooler by habit, at a loss of who to practice on next.

“Oh, man, Coulson’s on a rampage, today,” someone says and Clint rolls his eyes—Coulson’s always on a rampage when it comes to junior agents, he says it’s his version of tough love—but he leans over to hear the conversation better, anyway.

“He’s got me on requisition forms for the next month,” someone else says. “I _hate_ requisition forms.”

“Hey, you’ve got it good. I’m stuck with filing lab reports for big, green and angry and God’s gift to technology.”

“Ooh, man, I’m sorry.”

There’s a round of condolences for the poor schmuck that has to deal with Banner and Stark. Clint is amused, but then, he works with the guys on a regular basis and familiarity must breed immunity when it comes to the Brothers Geek.

Speaking of Coulson, though…

Tracking down his handler is easy; Coulson’s in the first place Clint checks—his office. There are a number of tempting targets from where Clint is curled against the air vent, but he doesn’t get a chance to even decide which one to aim for.

“If you shoot at anything in this room, I will personally make sure that you get assigned to the greenest batch of recruits I can find the next time we have training runs,” Coulson says evenly, never stopping the steady movement of pen on paper.

Clint huffs. “You’re no fun,” he complains, unloading the bolt from the crossbow. and setting the weapon down with care.

“I’m more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” Coulson retorts. He pauses and turns to look directly at the air vent. “Come down, please. I need to go over your last mission report with you; it seems we have differing definitions of what constitutes a complete breakdown of events.”

Clint goes, but only because unless he wants to go shoot something in the vicinity of Fury—and he’s not suicidal, thank you very much—he’s really got nothing better to do than argue mission reports with Coulson

Besides, there’s a chance that Coulson won’t just hand him over to the rest of his teammates when they finally track him down for revenge.


End file.
